thank you

March 15
The Elders gave us a ride to the library today for email. Elder Najar is sitting next to me dramatically bemoaning the fact that he only got one email this week and it’s from one of his friends telling him that she’s engaged. Hahaha. Sad day. But he goes home in 2 months so he should just be lucky that he’s even getting any mail.

So this is a cool story: One of my recent converts from like a year ago named Joshua called me to get the number of the Elders who live in his mom’s area. His mom was sick and he wanted to give her a blessing, but needed another priesthood holder. The next day was p-day and I saw Elder Murphey, one of the Elders who went with Joshua to give the blessing. “So how’d the blessing go?” I asked. Elder Murphey smiled and said, “Well…He commanded his mom to be baptized…” hehe…I love recent coverts. Unfortunately his mom was too sick to and incoherent at the time to set up a return appointment with the missionaries. They decided to wait until she is feeling better before they followed up on that.

This week has been full of interesting-ness. On Tuesday we were walking down the street when suddenly a terminex truck pulled up and the driver called out, “Sisters! I have a referral for you!” That was out of the blue. It was a member in another ward. His wife is a convert and her family lives in our area. He said, “They aren’t interested at all, but you should still go over a visit.” So we tried two times and no one was there both times, but this Saturday we tried one more time. We knocked at the door and an older woman and her 23-year-old daughter answered. The daughter was beaming and smiling!...the mother was glowering and scoffing. So we introduced ourselves and asked if we could come in. The mom agreed to let us in, but then walked out to finish some yard work. The daughter ran after her, “Mom! This is for you!” So after some gentle proding we convinced her to come sit down with us. “So how did you join the church?” we asked the daughter, Kimberly. As soon as she started talking the mother jumped to her feet and went to the kitchen and started making cookies with a lot of vigor and venom…I was glad I was not that cookie dough. So we switched our conversation to the mom, Debbie. “So you’re Catholic? Have you been Catholic you whole life?” “My family has been CATHOLIC throughout the ages all the way back to ST. PETER!” We turned back to Kimberly and she smiled nervously. “Oh….hmmmm. So you weren’t happy that your daughter joined the Church?” Debbie just rolled her eyes…oh heaven help us. Well, we asked her about her Catholic beliefs and she opened up a bit. Suddenly she said, “One of my patients was your president.” “Umm….what? President Cutler?” “Yeah, I think so.” “The guy with the herniated disk?” “Yeah, I was his nurse.” (Quick back ground, President Cutler had spinal cord surgery last week because of a random herniated disk. It was a big deal among the TSAM). So I guess President had talked to her quite a bit and made a fairly good impression with her. Crazy! So we talked her into listening to a 10 minute first lesson. “Okay, 10 minutes. That’s how long the cookies will take.” I’m here to tell you that that was one powerful 10 minute lesson. I could feel years of prayers being answered in that 10 mintue chunk. Her heart was softened. We had her get one of the many copies of the Book of Mormon that had been given to her and we marked Moroni 10:3-5. We gave her some pamphlets and set another appointment for this next week. It was pretty cool. She was still grumbling and huffing as she handed us some cookies, but we could tell she was just a super sweet lady. Who knows…
One last story. This has kind of been a sad week for the Encino Park ward. Last Sunday Sister Walls, a recent covert of a few years, was taken by the ambulance to the hospital in the middle of Sacrament. She died on Thursday because of an unknown hole in her heart leaving her 16 year old daughter an orphan. The ward was at the hospital, the young women and seminary classes were writing Ashleigh, the daughter, letters and sending cards. The relief society has been making preparations for the funeral. Sister Wall’s siblings have flown into town and they’ve been having meetings discussing who Ashleigh is going to live with. It’s all very sureal and it has hit a little close to home. I saw Ashleigh yesterday for the first time after the passing of her mother. All I could do was give her a hug and I said, “Your hair looks cute.” She smiled and the young women in the ward surrounded her and led her to Sunday school. They asked me to go and talk to the mia maid class (while Ashleigh was in the Laurel class) and explain to the girls how they could help Ashleigh. I told them to show their love for her without limitation. I remember how wonderful and uplifted I felt when I received letters and presents from friends and church members. I told them to keep inviting her to parties and activities cause she’s going to need distractions and breaks from her grief. I told them that they would be extremely important friends to Ashleigh for the rest of her life. I told them that it’s okay to talk to her about it, especially in a few months when things will have calmed down. As I talked to them I couldn’t help thinking about all the people who helped me and my family almost 10 years ago when my family was in the car accident and I’ve just been filled with gratitude for all that help. I just want to publicly thank everybody who helped us in some way. Thank you Aunt Rachel for taking pictures of me and my friends, thank you Leslie Merkley and Sherri Cutler for staying by my bed at the hospital. Thank you Uncle Neal for calling me telling me that you wished you could be in Texas with us. Thank you to the city of McKinney. Thank you to all my teachers at the time who came to the funeral. Thank you to all my friends at school who came to visit me. Thank you for all my seminary friends who visited me and planned that party for me, and stayed in touch with me all these years. Thank you Uncle Jim for giving that beautiful tribute to my mother at her funeral. Thank you Mckinney 2nd ward. Thank you Grandma wiltbank for crying with me that one time. Thank you Sara for coming to get me when the doctors forgot about me in that hall way :) thank you Kirsten and Clint and Andre and Caleb for being salwarts. Thank you Lane and Marcia for taking us in. Thank you Catherine, Kevin, Mike, Michelle, Marci, and Brian for accepting us. Thank you Grandma and Grandpa Johnson for everything. Thank you Ellen for staying with Caleb. I have a bunch more thank you’s but I’m running out of time. The computer is about to kick me off. But I just want everybody to know how much I am grateful for everything they did. It didn’t go unnoticed, but it was too hard to say thank you before and it still kind of is. I love all of you and I am on a mission because of your love and help

Love sister johnson